Thursday, 30 November 2006

Newsletter

Our first newsletter went out today, which included

our “Top Pop” for the month

and this month's feature portrait.

If you’d like to receive a copy of the newsletter, go to the home page, and click on the “Launch Special” at the bottom… this will let you sign up for future newsletters, as well as give you a Pop Art Gift Voucher to the value of $20 for use with any Pop Art purchase in the future.

Thursday, 23 November 2006

The Bashful Blogger

Ok, am slowly getting my head around this whole ‘blogging’ concept. If you’d asked me what Blogging was a couple of months ago, I’d have had images of some cave-man type dude hitting another cave-man type dude over the head with a wooden club (hmm anyone else get that or is it just me?)

. But being a bit more of an 'internet' chick these days, I asked Google, "What is blogging?" and Google told me "

it is the act of writing in one's blog. To blog something is to write about something in one's blog. This usually involves linking to something the author finds interesting on the internet." Ahhh so it's all perfectly clear to me now!

I’m also slowly, shyly, tippy-toeing my way into some online communities… they can be a little intimidating for the first timer!! There are hundreds, sometimes thousands of people on a forum at any given time, communicating with each other. If you’ve got something to say, and I mean anything, it seems you’re bound to find a forum with a very willing membership who are more than ready to listen to you, praise you, bag the shit out of you or simply give you a whole new perspective on things.

I decided to ask some experts – members of art and photography forums - what they think of Pascoe Pop Art portraits. Geez, it’s like turning up to the first day at a new school… the fear of rejection… wanting to make the right impression right from the word go… knowing, just KNOWING, that the “Yeah I’m cool, I know what I’m doing” appearance you’re trying so hard to maintain is going to inevitably come crashing and burning down…

This was the first response I got:

“Yeah they’re not really that great. I definitely wouldn’t want one of them on my wall.”

Ouch, so not a good start! Thankfully, some more comments came through later that were far more encouraging. Extremely encouraging in fact. Phew, made me feel a little better about cracking into the scene... though it's a big, bad world in there! I've got a long way to go, but I'm pretty happy with how much I've learnt so far...

Medecins Sans Frontieres

It’s a small world…

How many times a week do you find yourself saying that? I swear I say it all the time… but then again it may have something to do with the fact that I live in Brisbane – not exactly a heaving metropolis and thus it is perhaps not that crazy that my boyfriend’s best-mate’s mate is my house-mate’s work-mate’s mate. Hmm…

Anyway, I found myself saying it again on Saturday night. I was at a farewell party in one of Vegas’s happening bars (meaning it was crawling with 19-year-olds) and was introduced to a lovely lady, Fiona Terry, who, by the way, has worked for MSF Australia for the past 10 years. No way, we are donating 10% of our profits to MSF. Ok, not too crazy a coincidence I suppose, but certainly was enough of a connection to get a conversation started with a very interesting and intelligent woman.

I took the opportunity of finding out as much as I could about Fiona’s work (poor woman was probably looking forward to a nice relaxing night out with some close friends!). But she was such an inspiration, having devoted her whole working life to global social justice causes, and seemed more than happy to share some stories with me. She has been stationed in so many hot spots including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the North Korean border. And she gave me a glimpse into a completely new perspective to the provision of international aid. I’m not even going to try to pretend I understand it at the moment, but I plan to do a lot more reading on the subject to enlighten myself a little more.

Fiona has written a book called “Condemned to Repeat: The Paradox of Humanitarian Action” – possibly not the lightest of bed-time reading, but I’m going to see if I can get through it. I just found a couple of interesting articles on her work also, including this one, which I found quite interesting.

I love it when you meet someone who really inspires you and reminds you how much potential every human being has to make a difference in the world.

Wednesday, 22 November 2006

Pop-Rate this Portrait!

Stay tuned for monthly prizes to customers whose PopArt portraits are “Pop-Rated” the highest for the month.Check out the Public Gallery if you’re wondering what I’m talking about, where our customers can ‘hang’ their PopArt for public viewing.Then, visitors can vote or “pop-rate” each portrait with up to five stars.The Pop-Score accumulates, and if your portrait gets the most votes during the month, you’ll be rewarded!

Friday, 17 November 2006

Free $20 Vouchers on offer

We're offering 500 free $20 vouchers as part of our website launch campaign (a little belatedly, but better late than never!). Just click on the link to sign up to our newsletter, and we'll email you your voucher number for use at any time in the future when you invest in some Pascoe PopArt.

Our monthly newsletter will simply keep you up-to-date with any new styles and deals we have on offer, so sign up. You won't be bombarded with annoying emails from us, promise!

Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!

Well we’re very happy over here at PopArt headquarters. The launch went very well, and in the few days since, we’ve had over 500 people visit us! And from all corners of the globe – Australia, Hong Kong, Denmark, Israel, Canada, Nepal – just to name a few locations. So a big Thank you to all of you who have obviously been spreading the word for us. It’s really appreciated.

Now the minor challenge of introducing the website to a decent chunk of the rest of the world...

A global marketplace

It never ceases to amaze me when people from all corners of the globe visit our site. Our first customer was from Nepal!! The ordering system seems to be working really well as we’ve only had good feedback so far. Payment can be made in four different currencies – Australian dollars, American dollars, British pounds and Euros – which makes it very user-friendly. And best of all, there are no shipping, packaging or freight charges on top of our base rates – we’ve based our business model on their being no hidden extras and we mean it. It means that sometimes we have to absorb greater shipping costs than others (like when it goes to Nepal!) but we believe our customers will appreciate the one-price-includes-everything approach.

Doctors Without Borders

This is my favourite part about starting up the business. Even before we had the personalised Pop Art idea, Matt and I were tossing around business ideas with the intention of diverting a percentage of profits to charitable organisations. We’ve got a few more ideas on the boil of how we’d like to do this (and encourage more businesses to do it). But for now, we are really happy to be donating 10% of our sales proceeds to Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders. They are a fantastic organisation and one that has had a huge impact in times of crises worldwide.

We’ll be publishing a cumulative total of donations made to Doctors Without Borders on the website. It will be great to watch that number grow! Keep an eye out for it soon.

It started with a family photo…

The idea for Pascoe PopArt really started when I had a family photo printed on canvas for Mum for her birthday. The whole process was done online – did a google search, found a canvas printer (Brilliant Prints) that seemed really professional, emailed my photo and two days later had a high quality, framed canvas in my hot little hands – the Derrick kids never looked so good! Needless to say it was a hit with Mum.

Both Matt and I were so impressed with the service, professionalism and quality that this printing service offered… we didn’t even have to pay for it until we saw the final work. Of course, they were guaranteed repeat business from us for their efforts, and we couldn’t help but want to spread the word about them.

So it really got us thinking about the best way to run a business online. Most businesses seem to entice their customers with false promises and low prices, only to catch them out later with fine print and bad quality. But we figure, if you are offering a service that you actually believe in, and operate honestly and professionally, you’re going to have customers who not only want to buy from you again, but they want to tell their friends about you too! You couldn’t get a better marketing strategy than that as far as I’m concerned.

So, these were the kind of conversations we were having, but we had no idea how far it was going to take us!

From little things, big things grow…

Picture this… Matt and Rachel sitting on a bus. Bus pulls up in front of a bar. Rachel comments on the artwork – some funky pop-art paintings of celebrities mounted on canvas. (Rachel still in her obsession with canvas prints, wants to have everything printed on canvas). “Wouldn’t it be awesome to see your own photo up on the wall as art like that”, says Rachel, as she looks at Kate Moss’s pop-art portrait (the fact that Kate Moss is, oh, a world super model, and Rachel is, well, just Rachel, was inconsequential to Rachel as she started picturing the transformation her own portrait would undoubtedly make). “Not a bad idea”, says Matt.

And Matt being a man of acting on his words, (Rachel would have just talked about it for a while), didn’t let the idea stop there. Some brainstorming sessions on the deck that night over a few cold beverages, and well, here we are!

About Me

Name: Rachel

Location: QLD, Australia

Welcome to PopMyArt! A little log of an e-business journey........... In 2006, a young Australian couple saw a celebrity pop art collection in a West End cafe. They were huge, striking artworks that had been created from photos. "Imagine turning your own photo into a piece of wall art", said Rachel. "We could do that!", replied Matt.
And so Pascoe Pop Art was launched, an online art service that transforms ordinary photos into larger than life canvas pop art portraits.